Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Fall Nostalgia

Fall--the end of summer, looking to winter.
Fall colors against the
brick of a local school.

In the fall I want to curl up in a fleece, work outside, eat a picnic lunch, take a nap, watch a movie, go for a walk, drink hot tea, and that's just for starters. I look homeward in the fall. I don't know what it is. It must have something to do with fall and the start of school. School is where most of my memories begin, and throughout the first 18 or so years of life, life is determined by fall--what grade you will be in, new shoes, new teacher, new routines. Fall is a way of marking time for most of the early years of our lives because whether we liked school or not, the start of it marks that we are another year older, something kids look forward to eagerly, that is, growing up.

Memories of Home
Nostalgia must play a part in past memories of home. Despite problems, there was security and warmth for me because of homemade cookies, dinner, buying new school clothes, playing games, popping corn, sleeping in, laundry on the line, and generally a secure backdrop to grow up against. Who wouldn't love to be a kid again if it meant happiness, security, and comfort?

Routinely routine
Also fall meant wood fires (warm, cozy), and routine.
I think we all long for routine. Summer is the anti-routine. Fall is all-routine. There is definitely something about routine that makes humans tick. They say kids thrive on it.
What is cozier than a puppy by a fire?

Finally it leads to Relationship
I long for a Norman Rockwell existence, especially in the fall and around the holidays. One where home and hearth are the setting and the relationships within are peaceful and secure. Maybe it's something about hunkering down for the fall and winter being warm and cozy with a book and blanket, no place to go except for a walk, and a pot of soup on the stove, and friendly warm conversation.

I've always had a similar longing when I drive through a neighborhood in the evening and see lights on inside people's homes. Since childhood, I've always felt it meant something wonderful was happening inside...people were together, happy, peaceful. But I'm not so naive to realize that may not be the case. It could have been just electricity igniting a lightbulb, as empty as that. But a light on in a home reminds me all of home should be--relationships! 

The end of an age (again).
Also I get sad that summer is over, and for me the idea of autumn marking time is very relevant again. It means my boy is growing up. After graduating from college I loved fall moving in because I didn't have to go to school but I could enjoy the site of school buses for what it meant for me then and now. The beaches and grocery stores are less crowded on the weekdays! 

Eternity?
Maybe nostalgia is suppose to draw us to eternity--the ultimate in peace, comfort, and security. Maybe this nostalgia of fall is simply a longing for the life we were meant to have, a life originally planned by a bigger Someone, namely our Creator God. He gave humankind many of His characteristics, such as feelings, thinking, and free will. Beautiful things. He also gave us a contract, and we choose to breach it. With the breach we forfeited what He promised in His contract, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness in a perfect lush garden filled with all earthly and heavenly delights and with pain-free relationships with others and Him. After that breach He closed the doors to that garden, put some angels there to guard it, and made us go to work for a living, bear pain in childbirth, and struggle with the earth to eat. Ultimately does nostalgia stem from this? Those first people longed to go back to the garden, that idyllic life they experienced and for that perfect carefree give-and-take they shared with each other and their Creator, who they spoke with face to face! What we are missing!

Nostalgia looks to the past, but we have been promised a future--another perfect carefree paradise, another Eden waiting for us. Jesus, the carpenter God, came to repair the breach. He took some wood, hammer, and nails, and he fixed it.
My husband built
this cross on our
land to remind us
what Jesus did to provide
us with an eternal
love, life and home!
Now we just have to choose to accept the repair, stop trying to get back to Eden our own way with our own map. We'll never find it, nor will we be let in if we do. Remember the angels with the flaming swords guarding the way? I'm not ambitious enough to take on an angel. So I propose I need to turn my nostalgia into hope that looks ahead to a perfect garden. It's a future we cannot fully understand, never having lived in that perfect garden ourselves. For this, we can only have faith.


In the meantime, life is not as Norman Rockwell portrayed. It's like what they say about pursuing happiness, you never find it. I think the same is true of longing. If you try to pursue it, it evades you. You have to catch those peaceful comforting moments when they are there despite how rough and rocky life is. You have to make them and revel in them when they appear. It's being present in the moment and not panicking over every little imperfect part of life, whatever it may be. It is odd, that feeling-- it's like a dream. A dream of dreams. And thankfully that dream can be reality for those that accept the repair Christ made.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiasties 3:11

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